Significance
Plans were made to hold negotiations for national reunification between Feng, Zhang, Duan, and Sun Yat-sen. These were fruitless and Sun died in Beijing in March 1925.
Feng and Zhang came to blows when the Fengtian general Guo Songling defected to the Guominjun on November 22, and started the Anti-Fengtian War. Six days after this, Li Dazhao led a so-called First United Front movement to topple Duan's provisional government, calling it the Capital Revolution. Feng wanted to support this but changed his mind, preferring to concentrate his forces on Zhang's army. As a result, the Capital Revolution movement collapsed.
While the defeat of the powerful Zhili clique paved the long-term success of the Northern Expedition by the Nationalist Party, its greatest impact was to buy time for the Kuomintang to build up its National Revolutionary Army. Had the coup not happened, the Zhili clique would surely have finished off the Kuomintang after defeating the Fengtian clique. Feng was saved from losing all his power by allying with Chiang Kai-shek during the Northern Expedition, but later became disillusioned with the Generalissimo's leadership. He rebelled against Chiang and was defeated during the Central Plains War of 1930.
Read more about this topic: Beijing Coup
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